The cost of living crisis caused by the rise in inflation and the challenging economic circumstances of the Covid-era has led to many people struggling to adequately feed and hear their families. This is the reality for many outlined in the Covid Realities project run by York University, which aims to understand the fallout of Covid alongside those of the likes of Brexit, climate change, and the war in Ukraine, on the price of essential goods and services.
The project was launched in April 2020 to better understand how people on low-incomes were faring during the pandemic but has since broadened its scope to cover the cost of living crisis more generally.
“As winter 2021 loomed, we knew that the combination of the £20 cut to Universal Credit and the growing cost of living crisis would make daily life only harder still for families struggling on a low-income,” the researchers explain.
“Even so, the evidence generated from this research is a damning indictment of the extent and nature of hardship that families on a low-income routinely face.”
Social help
The researchers believe that most families have very little that they can realistically cut from their budgets, so government support is crucial. Without this, people will be forced to go without essentials, such as food and heating.
This has a knock-on effect on people’s mental and physical health, and so the authors believe it’s vital that significant changes are made to social security to help these households.
“These findings underscore the need for urgent action to ameliorate the hardships faced by people living on the lowest incomes,” they explain.
“But they also point to more long-standing problems in the way our social security system and labor market are organized. These problems are no less deserving of our attention, and it is vital that our conversations about how to address them include the voices of people with lived experience.”
The researchers call for permanent changes that aim to address the challenge of inadequate incomes, including ensuring benefits rise in line with the cost of living, raising the minimum wage, and removing VAT from energy bills.
